Honeybee Genome Sequenced 67
mapkinase writes to let us know about articles in Nature on the completed sequencing of the honeybee genome. From the first article: "Two other insects have already been sequenced: the malaria-carrying mosquito Anopheles gambiae, and one of science's great model organisms, the fruitfly Drosophila melanogaster. Like these, the bee is much easier to manipulate and study than, say, the monkey. But unlike the mosquito and the fruitfly, the bee's social behavior is of special interest." Another article in the same issue clarifies why this sequencing is important: "The genome is helping to reveal some of those [such as the bees' dance language and the division of labor in the hive] mechanisms. For instance, there are 65 spots in the genome that seem to code for short RNA molecules called microRNAs (miRNAs), molecular switches that can turn genes on or off. The researchers found that miRNA activity differs between bees doing different jobs."
miRNA? (Score:2, Interesting)
softICE, anyone? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:miRNA? (Score:4, Interesting)
Make Wings;
Make Thorax;
Make Head;
Size = 10;
if (Bee == Queen){//miRNA
Size = 30;
Behavior = "Go around laying eggs";
}
else {
Size = 10;
Behavior = "Go around gathering honey";
}
Give or take. miRNA goes around turning off certain gene stuff. I'm too lazy to RTFA, but I'd like to know the relationship between miRNA and royal jelly.
honeybees are very cool (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:softICE, anyone? (Score:3, Interesting)
Many of the features of biology are context dependent, which makes predicative analysis quite difficult.
Re:softICE, anyone? (Score:2, Interesting)
Uhh. ohhh. quite the opposite. Error correction is very bad (by IT standards at least) -that is how actually things evolve (since there is no mechanism for modification except mutation - which is an error). On average every single cell in human body has at least one error. Granted absolute majority of them are insignificant (since they happen on non functioning parts of code for this cell) .
Living organism are quite a freaking mess from engineer's point of view. -Heck that's what you get if you launch a very shoddy evolutionary algorithm and run it for a couple of hundred millions of years.